Hooray new DF update! This one lets you interact with the hill forts and villages surrounding your fortress. If I remember right, this is the last major update before Toady starts working on the magic system - which I'm very excited about. Then, after the magic/mythology update, I believe he said that boats were next up on the agenda, and multi-tile creatures. That will be interesting.

Toady One wrote:There are now peaceful and not-so-peaceful ways of expanding your influence in the world. Once a site becomes linked to you (through prosperity or by conquest; you'll see a message), you can send a messenger there to request workers, or send dwarves from the fort out to such sites (from v-p). This only works on historical figures, so you might find you don't have off-site workers available at first, though some sites do have them. This release should also improve the issues dwarves were having with negative thoughts, and they can also now experience permanent changes in their personalities and intellectual values due to events in their lives.

Note: Insurrections were such a problem in sites that I had to turn them off for your fortress's holdings; we'll get back to that later. It wasn't even the insurrections, really; the dwarves were bailing on the occupation immediately because they were afraid of insurrections.

New stuff

Your civilization will send out groups to found sites near prosperous fortresses

Existing sites near prosperous fortresses will associate themselves to those fortresses

Added ability to take over sites and install administrators

Can view your new holdings from the 'c' screen

Can send workers off-site and send out messengers to request their return

Mulling over long-term memories can lead to shifts in intellectual values and personality changes

Major bug fixes

Fixed hauling route crash

Fixed problem causing county stage to be skipped in noble elevation

Stopped all visiting barons from being elevated along with your baron

Changed horror calculation from seeing a dead body

Stopped similar memories close in time from taking all the memory space

Toady's devlogs are excellent as usual (although I'm almost a month late with this one).

Toady One wrote:This week involved a lot of bug-fixing from last week, so there's not as much concrete progress to report. For instance, a human trading company called the Present Hall was wildly successful trading various leathers and bones for crafting, and eventually had enough clout to open a branch warehouse inside a dwarf fortress for the first time. Can't resist that draltha leather. This turned out to be a strategic error, as two short years later, a forgotten beast obliterated the fortress, the warehouse, and killed everyone inside. So, what's the correct response? Close the destroyed branch? No, no, you stimulate the (non-existent) economy by hiring local. Forgotten beast, you're the new (ruined) warehouse administrator, congratulations!

Much fun has been had there. very carefull fun. Still need to find out if it is a zombie biome though.
So I'm also going very slow.
Oh, and everything has been covered in red and no clean water is to be found

I have breached 3 caverns that were all dry
Though I did not explore them thoroughly yet, just went by what was revealed upon breaching. They are currently safely behind a raised drawbridge though till I decide to risk it.